Why It Makes Sense That LinkedIn Paid a Jillion Dollars for Lynda, and One Thing I’d Do Differently

The news broke yesterday that LinkedIn has agreed to buy online education site Lynda.com for $1.5 billion, in a you-pick-two deal of 52 percent cash and 48 percent stock. It’ll close later this year.

Lynda is LinkedIn’s 13th acquisition and its most expensive. Last year, it paid $175 million for Bizo, a Web application that helps connect advertisers with the people they want to reach. And most of its other 11 acquisitions have been in that vein, too: solutions that bulk up the functionality and usefulness of LinkedIn itself.

(The one outlier might be SlideShare, which LinkedIn bought for $119 million in 2012, because it's more of a Netflix for slide decks than behind-the-scenes infrastructure.)

Why "LyndaIn" ("Linkda"?) Makes Sense

So why does it make complete sense for LinkedIn to pay that kind of money for Lynda?

CEO Jeff Weiner sums it up in the first three words in the headline of his post here announcing the acquisition: “Always Be Learning.” He writes:

“For well over two decades, I've been interested in helping to reform the education system. It was actually one of the reasons I went into business, specifically with the belief that one day I could hopefully have enough influence and resources to make a positive difference.”

Does that sound excessively optimistic, in the vein of trying to contain global warming or end world hunger?

I don’t think so. Here’s the reality: Much of the US education system really is lacking, especially higher education.

I’m tempted to veer off here into a rant about college access and the admissions process, because as the mother of one high school senior (and another child who’s a few years ahead of her), I’ve been steeped in this issue personally—sometimes reaching the point of seething—over the past few years.

I’ll contain the rant, but here’s the TL;DR version:

1. Access to education isn’t what it should be (and not just because the admissions process is a circus, although it often is).
   
   
2. Universities are businesses, many with unsustainable business models that squeeze both academics and students almost to the point of popping.
   
   
3. When they graduate, many of our kids aren’t adequately prepared for the real world with the skills they need to function in it (see point 2).

We need to try to fix what's broken.

To be fair, that third point—about unprepared graduates—isn’t entirely on the shoulders of higher ed.

Our world is always evolving, of course—in business, more quickly than ever before. And so, relevant information and skills aren’t something any of us can access in a one-and-done degree: We need to always be learning.

And that’s why Lynda.

Because LinkedIn acquired the content, team, and technology infrastructure to keep its business relevant by making us relevant: by turning each of us into better job candidates or by keeping us up-to-speed on what we need to know to succeed.

In other words, it intends to be a full-service job market—with networking, insights, and, now, practical and relevant education and training—that serves not only people like us looking for new jobs and new skills but also recruiters and companies looking for us.

(Those two modifiers—practical and relevant—are key. Real-world. Not ivory-tower. Actionable. Not theory.)

So: help job seekers identify skills gaps for specific positions. Then map relevant, real-world training and education to those gaps.

If you play it out a little bit, it’s not too far a stretch to see “Lynda Trained” or “LinkedIn Certified” designations start to appear on LinkedIn profiles.

The One Thing I’d Do Differently

Lynda has an enormous portfolio of online courses taught by industry experts across a zillion fields and many functions—from Adobe to WordPress. If I were LinkedIn + Lynda (LyndaIn), I’d look to focus—going deeper and getting more specialized—on areas where things progress so quickly that it’s impossible for job seekers to keep up without an intentional Always be learning mindset.

Marketing is one of those areas. But of course I would say that, as the head of content at a marketing education and training company, which (as it happens) goes pretty deep into marketing education.

I’d also introduce a learning path to guide learners, make the courses less random and more intentional.

It’s trickier said than done, because going deeper means finding those experts with the vision and necessary know-how to curate the most knowledgeable voices and more relevant information.

I’m a fan of quality over quantity—but I’m a ridiculously fervent fan of quality and quantity.

What’s Next

I’ve been saying for five years that LinkedIn is the dark horse of social media—or, at least, it’s the workhorse of the bunch. (If Twitter is where you go to talk to people you don’t know and Facebook is where you go to talk with people you already know, then LinkedIn is where all of you can meet up to get stuff done together.)

So I think this acquisition is a smart move in an interesting direction that underscores the need for an Always be learning mindset.

In 2012—fresh off the SlideShare and Rapportive acquisitions, and about to acquire Pulse, the Web/mobile news reader that would ignite the publishing platform you're reading this on right now—LinkedIn’s Jeff Weiner wrote:

“Our ultimate dream is to develop the world's first economic graph.”

What does that mean?

“[W]e want to digitally map the global economy, identifying the connections between people, jobs, skills, companies, and professional knowledge—and spot in real-time the trends pointing to economic opportunities. It's a big vision, but we believe we're in a unique position to make it happen.”

At the very least, I’m starting the slow-clap for trying.

But again, you know my bias. So what do you think?

Ann Handley is the Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs. Her new book, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content, is a Wall Street Journal bestseller.

Sign up to hear more from her at AnnHandley.com.

 Photo source: Bigstock